Where I've Been
by JellyBabe02
Summary: What DID happen that faithful Bring Your Daughter to Work Day...?
1. Chapter 1

Chell woke up shaking. The dream again? The memory of it was already leaving, but she remained terrified. She forced her eyes to stay wide. If she blinked, she might fall asleep. And if she fell asleep, she might have the dream again. It was normal for an eight year old to be scared about nightmares, but Chell hated to admit fear. And discomfort. And defeat. So she pulled herself together and sat up, her eyes still wide. She remained rigid, despite her strongest attempts to calm herself down.

She stood up and staggered into the kitchen. It was very dark. She hated the dark, but that was another thing she wanted to fix. Not that it was easy. It never is easy to get over fear for children, or anyone for that matter. Chell was no exception. She decided to go about her morning as normally as possible. She wasn't exactly short for her age, but she still had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the cabinet. She could just reach the edge of the box with her fingertips. She tried to coax it into her hands, but it wasn't easy. She kept telling dad to put it on a lower shelf.

The lights suddenly came on. Chell squealed with fright and the cereal box fell off the shelf and fell on top of her, the cereal exploding out and spilling everywhere. Dad was standing in the doorway in his pyjamas and dressing gown, arms crossed.

"Sweetie. It's ten to three." he said.

Chell stood up and whipped her head around, trying to get the corn flakes out of her hair.

"Not my fault." she grumbled "I had that stupid dream again."

She had been having the dream for over a month now. The same each time. She had been with dad, and something bad was happening. She didn't know what it was, and she had tried to tell dad, but he didn't understand. He just told her to be quiet. Then there had been… green?

"It's alright, sweetheart. Remember, it's only a dream. It can't hurt you." said dad, with a smile and a ruffle of her hair.

_Humph _thought Chell _Like it's that easy, that you just say something and it's all fine._

Chell didn't talk much. She had been taught that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. She followed that rule very strictly. So she said nothing now. She just picked the box back up and poured herself the cereal. Her dad got the milk out of the fridge for her and poured it onto her cereal. Chell wanted to eat her breakfast alone, but dad sat down beside her and smiled.

"So, sweetie, you excited about tomorrow?"

Tomorrow was the first annual Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Chell's dad worked at a science company called Aperture Science. Chell had never been there, but she didn't want to go. She hated it, mostly due to the Big Surprise. Chell had spent her entire life so far being rated second and the Big Surprise coming first. Chell's solitary nature may have been due to the fact that her dad spent any spare time he ever got working on the big surprise instead of raising his only child. Apparently the Big Surprise was all finished now. From what she had been told, it was going to make all their lives better. She wasn't so sure, though.

"Well? Are you excited?"

Chell followed her rule and stayed silent. Her dad got the message.

"Hm. Well, why don't you just go get dressed, and then you can just go back to sleep until school starts." said dad, but Chell immediately shook her head.

"I hate sleeping" she said "I don't know what's happening in the world when I'm asleep."

"Sweetheart, you NEED your sleep–"

"I'm not going back to sleep," Chell interrupted "I'm not tired."

Her father sighed.

"Fine, you can go into the living room and watch television." he said.

Chell smiled and carried her cereal bowl into the living room. She went about settling herself comfortably on the couch, her feet not even reaching the edge of the cushion. She reached for the remote and turned the TV on.

_It's time to play the music; it's time to light the lights…_

Chell's smile broadened into a wide grin as the Muppet Show began. Her dad shuffled back to his room.

_It's time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight!_


	2. Chapter 2

"Have a good day, love!" said dad cheerily as Chell hopped out of the car.

She waved to her dad and waddled away under the weight of her school bag towards her school. She was a couple of hours earlier then any other children, but after the Muppet Show had finished and she had gotten sick of watching the early morning news, her dad had driven her to school. Even so, she was still nearly two hours early.

Chell was the first one to school today, just as she was most every day. Mr Huber waved to her as she entered from where he was starting playground duty. She didn't wave back. As much as she liked Mr Huber, she still wouldn't allow herself to show any emotion to any person, no matter who they were – besides her dad of course. Dad was the only person in the whole wide world she could ever love.

Walking through the school yard towards the canteen, she was quite deflated to realise that it was still closed. No hot chocolate or warm cheesy buns until later, it seemed. Instead, she seated herself at one of the picnic tables by the canteen and pulled out one of her school books. She might as well fill the time by going over her work.

_Hmm _she thought _Mr Ritchie wants me to go over my old potato battery experiment and see if the same principles apply to other fruits or vegetables. I'm going to try using an apple. Amy is going to be my lab partner._

Chell inwardly winced. Amy didn't like Chell and Chell didn't like Amy. The only reason they were working together was because Mr Ritchie insisted on mixing up kids who didn't know one another to try to get them to make friends. But Chell didn't have any friends and didn't want any. Amy was the exact opposite. She was friends with almost everyone and desperate to be so.

The worst part was that when she was teamed up with Chell she wouldn't do anything; she just sat there watching her. To be blunt, Amy was stupid. All she did was jitter on about her friends and how attractive all the boys she knew were and how much they all liked her – when she wasn't going on about how poorly Chell was completing both of the girls' work.

_Well, _thought Chell _not today!_

She slammed her book shut and shoved it back into her school bag. Today, AMY could do it! She crossed her arms defiantly and smiled smugly, knowing that she had won. She remained that was for about ten seconds until she felt bored and decided to do something else. What to do…

She had a book that her dad had recommended that she read, but she didn't like it. As hesitant as she was to admit it, the book scared her. She didn't like the idea of a Big Brother always watching everything that she did, knowing everything that ever happened. With that in mind, she decided not to read her book.

She could do some drawing, she had a near-empty art journal that she ought to begin filling up. She pulled it out, along with her coloured pencils. What should she draw…? She decided to draw Kermit the Frog. She pulled out a green pencil and started trying to draw his little green legs. She drew the legs too fat and threw the pencil at a tree, scrunching up her drawing as she did so.

She didn't have anything else to do, so she decided to just think. Think about the Big Surprise. And how very much she hated it.


	3. Chapter 3

"Honestly, sweetheart, you need to try and have more control over yourself." said Dad.

Chell pouted at him and found something of vast interest outside the car window. Dad sighed in frustration.

"Look, Chell, if you're going to stay silent for your entire life, you'll never get anywhere. So LOOK at me and SPEAK!"

Chell sheepishly looked back over at him. When Dad was angry, he was a different person. A scary person.

"I'm sorry." she said, as convincingly as she could.

"You sure didn't seem very sorry when you were sitting in the principle's office an hour ago. You never said sorry for attacking that poor girl you were in science with."

Despite her best attempts to remain calm that afternoon, the combination of being teamed up with someone she hated, being stressed over their experiment and the hatred of the thing that she was going to have to see the next day had driven her over the edge. Perhaps it wasn't entirely fair to have taken out her anger by blackening the eye of Amy Welton.

"Well…!" protested Chell, but Dad fixed her with a long stare. She tried again in a lower register of voice.

"I was very upset." she said quietly.

"And why is that?" asked Dad in a similar voice.

"… Because." concluded Chell. Dad stared at her again.

"I can't tell you." she insisted. Dad sighed again.

"Is it because you don't want to go to my work tomorrow?" he asked.

Chell's eyes widened slightly. Had she really been so obvious? Or was her father simply good at knowing these sorts of things? Perhaps this was a good thing. Maybe now she could have a decent conversation with him about the Big Surprise. She looked down at her toes.

"… Yes." She said finally.

"I knew it," said Dad "You're always so sullen whenever I mention the company's Bring Your Daughter to Work Day."

This time Chell said nothing.

"Well don't worry about it, sweetie. The other girls there won't make fun of you."

Chell's head snapped back up.

"Huh?" she said, confused. Dad looked a bit confused too.

"Well, surely the reason that you don't want to go is because you're concerned about the other girls making fun of you. I mean, let's face it, you don't look like all the other girls, and that's certainly not a bad thing. You're tall for your age and very skinny and gangly. Plus, you tend to not be particularly sociable around other kids your age. I don't doubt that the other girls bully you a little.

"But even so, that's no reason for you not to go! It'll be fully supervised, so all of the other girls there won't be able to be mean to you. All you'll have to do is work on your experiment."

Chell opened her mouth to correct his mistake, but she stopped herself. She couldn't quite bring herself to inform him that she actually eternally hated the project that he dedicated his life to.

"That's the problem, isn't it?" said Dad.

Chell looked away from him.

"Yes Dad. Yes, it is." she mumbled.

Dad smiled. He looked away from her and pulled into their driveway. Chell inwardly winced as she realised there was now no way out of going to Aperture Science the next day.


	4. Chapter 4

Chell was feeling unhappy. Chell was feeling VERY unhappy. She was sitting in the Aperture Science Employee Daycare Centre at a desk getting ready to be told what to do. She had just finished watching an all-too-long video about the history of Aperture Science. About the founder, Cave Johnson, and how he had started a company where he would make shower curtains for the US military. How he had gotten mercury poisoning from a secret project, and how it had inspired his three big ideas – although they refused to tell anyone about the first two, apparently the third one, the 'portal' project, worked out very well for the company, until Black Mesa stole it.

Then it went on and on about the long testing cycle that the device had been stuck in, and about how desperately Aperture Science wanted test subjects (at this point several employees had passed out sign up sheets for test subject employment). And finally, they had told the children about the development of the GLaDOS – the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System – that was being developed, and how it had been in development for about eight years and was going to be activated that very day.

Many of the girls had been excited by this, but Chell was sceptical. They had said that the scientists had been working on it for eight years: she was eight years old. Was GLaDOS the big surprise? If it was, then Chell hated GLaDOS and wanted to smash it to pieces. Perhaps she would do that when she got to see it later on.

The employee who had shown them the video, as well as Chell's dad, came forward.

"Kay girls, now you're gonna make a science experiment about potatoes. I doubt you'll be able to do anything but a potato battery, so I'll stick up the procedure for it on the wall." she took a deep suck from her cigarette and tossed the butt into the garbage bin.

Chell raised her hand.

Dad came forward to answer her. "Yes, sweetie?"

"I made a potato battery for class last year. Can I make something else?"

"Um… I guess-" he trailed off as the other employee gave him an icy stare. Dad cleared his throat and tried again.

"No, honey. Mr Johnson would get mad."

"Why do we need to use potatoes?" asked another girl named Heather.

"Actually," said Dad "someone at the cafeteria ordered FAR too many potatoes and they go off too quickly. From now on we'll have french fries for lunch."

Chell sighed as all the girls were directed into the next room to begin working on their projects. Cardboard, paper, pens and pencils, stickers, potatoes and a large collection of wires and transformers. The majority of the girls dived for the sticker sheet. Chell decided to try and find a potato that didn't smell stinky. It was hard, they all smelt like they had gone off. Eventually she found one that didn't seem too awful.

She picked up some bits and pieces and went over to a desk to work at. She really didn't want to do a potato battery experiment, but if she had to…

_PROBLEM _she wrote _My dad said someone at the cafeteria ordered too many potatoes so everybody has to do a project on potatoes for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day and lunch will be french fries._

She read over her work, found it satisfactory and went on to continue.

_We've been told we can use as many potatoes as we like but I'm only going to use one. I asked my Dad if I could do a different project because I already did a potato battery project in class last year and he said no, Mr Johnson would get mad._

She nodded, satisfied.

_HYPOTHESIS _she continued _Probably the potato will do that same thing it did last year for my class project, exept maybe not because I had a new potato last time and this one is pretty old._

She hesitated, worried that she had misspelt something, but she decided it was fine.

"Dad?" she called. Dad came over, knelt down beside her and looked at her experiment.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I was just wondering what YOUR hypothesis was for this so that I could have a second opinion." she said.

Dad smiled "My hypothesis is that whoever ordered the potatoes will get fired."

He stood up and ruffled her hair.

"Sorry, honey, I need to go down to the lab and help out with the Big Surprise. I'll catch up with you a little while later and walk you down there, okay?"

He left and began walking down the corridor, while Chell silently cursed the GLaDOS.


	5. Chapter 5

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Sorry that this took a little while, I currently have seven assignments due for school.

Anisocoria is a condition characterized by an unequal size of the pupils.

Henry wondered how the potato batteries were going. He was in the AI chamber, in front of the blue portal, working on some last-minute touch-ups on GLaDOS. Poor Chell, she didn't want to work on potatoes. As he had the thought, he wondered why management insisted that the public weren't allowed to know about the death of Cave Johnson. Probably because of the fact that he died from the moon rocks, which he techinically wasn't allowed to buy. Odd, how nobody else was affected by them. Maybe it was the mercury already in his bloodstream. In any case, it was probably all for the best that Caroline went in instead of Cave. She was a much more sensible person than him. Plus, he was allowed to keep her daughter as his own. It was a good thing that Doug didn't know about Chell; he would probably say that there's something bad about it, or that it was 'morally evil'.

Doug was a rather pessimistic fellow, and he was very negative towards GLaDOS. He didn't think that she was safe. Humph. Poppycock. He had been working on DOS for about… what, fifteen years now? And the GL part and been worked on for about twelve, eight since Caroline… merged. And yet Doug still insisted on trying to shoot down all of their dreams. Well, sure there were a couple others who weren't into the idea of artificial intelligence, but there were barely any.

"Henry, this is a bad idea." said a voice, startling Henry.

"Damnit, Doug, don't DO that!" he said angrily.

Doug was a small wiry man with a head of messy hair and a severe case of anisocoria that gave him a slightly disturbing, deranged look. He was highly paranoid and was constantly shifty-eyed and staring around the place. But right now he was clearly mustering his power of concentration and staring straight at Henry's face.

"We CAN'T turn it on!" insisted Doug.

Henry shook his head and continued walking towards the main chamber. Doug pulled him back.

"LISTEN to me Henry, for the LOVE of GOD!" he yelled "It's going to kill us all!"

Henry rolled his eyes.

"She's not going to try to hurt us, and even if she does, she'll still have the morality core to correct her problems."

"She. SHE. You act like it's a living thing, when you MURDERED the only human part of–"

"Yes, Doug, she. Caroline is NOT dead, she lives on in GLaDOS. Her mind is perfectly alive and comfortable, even if she no longer lives inside a human body." insisted Henry.

"Huh, yeah well if 'she' is so human, why don't you go and apologize for kidnapping her child in her last seconds of human life. What did you even do with that girl, anyway?" asked Doug.

"I don't think that a schizophrenic, paranoid and terrified should know what happened to a very young girl." sneered Henry. Although even as he said it, he regretted it and knew that he had crossed a line.

Doug opened his mouth to speak, but slammed it shut, his differently-sized pupils burning with fury. He spun around and began to walk smartly away from Henry.

"Doug, wait." called Henry. Doug stopped moving.

"You're needed in the main chamber to delivery the morality core in the case of an emergency, since you're the fastest runner."

Very slowly, Doug turned around and began walking past Henry whilst making no eye contact.

"I'm only doing this for the possibility that I may save a life. Even yours." he spat as he passed.


	6. Chapter 6

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Sorry that this took a while to release, I had a s#!t ton of homework and had to concentrate on my seven assignments rather then my Portal fanfic. Still, I hope that it's fun to read nonetheless. Enjoy!

"Okay, girls, it's time to go and see the greatest scientific achievement and blah de blah de blah. Follow me." said the Aperture Employee, who was now smoking a seventh cigarette.

Chell stood up and moved back a couple of paces so that she could see her experiment. She was rather proud of it, even if she had done the project before. She smiled with contempt and moved away, following the other girls from the group. Out of the Daycare Centre, through the place where they made the turrets, through the offices, through the lobby, and then into the big room at the end of a very long corridor.

There was a massive lump of metal hanging from the ceiling, with a large crowd of people all staring up at it, looking excited. Chell didn't like the look of it. It was so… big. Too big. She simply didn't like it. Turning away, she decided to examine the rest of the room. There was a small room off to one side, with lights leading from it to an alcove in the wall, where there was a weird grey object, looking like the end of a pipe sticking out of the ground. A funny-looking man with spiky hair was standing there, holding a big grey ball with a purple light in it. Then man didn't look happy like everyone else. He looked… what was the word…? Concerned. Yes. He looked very concerned.

Examining the rest of the room, Chell suddenly realised that there was a high platform near the top of the robot, with machinery and several people standing up there. She recognised her dad amongst them. But she wasn't paying much attention to them, for there was a white panel, about seven feet tall and two feet wide, with a strange blue circle on it. It looked like a blue ring of fire. Chell was mesmerised by it and couldn't look away.

"Welcome, fellow scientists, congress members, daughters!" called a voice. Chell tore her eyes from the circle and looked at a tall man who was standing next to the big metal thing.

"We are about to boot up GLaDOS!"

There was very loud cheering. Everyone was excited. But Chell wasn't. She didn't care about the GLaDOS, she just wanted to go and look at the blue fire ring. Surely there was a way to get up there. She turned away from the GLaDOS thing and walked back towards the exit. It was still open. She walked through the door and, to her surprise, it slammed closed. Shocked, she walked back towards it. But it just opened back up. She shrugged and began to walk back down the hallway. She decided to try and find a way to get up to the blue circle.

Chell walked back down the long hallway towards where the offices were. She couldn't see anyone in there, but that was probably because everyone was looking at the big metal thing. She decided to look around for a way to get up to the blue circle that she had seen. What was that thing…?


	7. Chapter 7

This was it. This was finally it. GLaDOS was going on, and this time, this time it would finally work. And as for Caroline… well, her 'death' wouldn't be in vain.

Henry looked around to make sure everyone was there. It seemed so. He could see Doug standing by the incinerator holding the Morality Sphere. He was shifty-eyed and looked very uncomfortable. That was nothing unusual. All the girls had come in, although he couldn't see…

Where was Chell?

"Henry? Y'all right? We're starting now." said Marc. Henry mentally shook himself and turned back to the machines. The fact that he couldn't see Chell didn't mean that she wasn't in here somewhere. It was nothing to worry about. No, nothing at all.

Marc grabbed the microphone and began to speak.

"Alright everyone! Are you ready for GLaDOS to come alive!?"

The audience screamed in excitement and anticipation. Henry grinned broadly. This truly was it. Oh, and the scientific accomplishment! This would not only make the world a better place, but put him and the other masterminds behind the 'convoluted madness' into recognition.

"Come on everyone, lets have a countdown!" yelled Marc.

"Ten!"

There was nowhere that Henry would rather be.

"Nine!"

Even with Chell, his own daughter.

"Eight!"

Well, perhaps not his real daughter, but her real mother was being activated now.

"Seven!"

So in some ways, Chell would be able to be with her real mother for the first time in years.

"Six!"

But he hadn't programmed GLaDOS with her human memories.

"Five!"

She was simply a mechanical scientist with a human mind, with no memories.

"Four!"

What would that be like, having no thoughts but science?

"Three!"

Surely that would be difficult to bear.

"Two!"

But truly, that was rather how he was. A man of science. And nothing more.

"One!"

With a smile on his face, he pulled down the switch. The yellow light lit up, and the screens around the top of GLaDOS began to flood with images. An ear-splitting cheer echoed through the room, making Henry's eyes light up too, with a smile covering his face. Henry had never felt so alive, so happy. Never had he felt this way. Never.

The screams of the people were so loud; it began to hurt his ears. So loud. And so… panicked. He felt a cold hand clutch his heart as he realised that it was beginning to stop. He tried to take in a breath to tell Doug to ready the morality sphere, but he couldn't breathe. His lungs were filled with neurotoxin. Deadly neurotoxin.

"Poor, pathetic humans." She said.


	8. Chapter 8

Chell pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth, finding that it allowed her to breathe a little easier. But not much easier. She could see the green stuff coming out of the high air vents. What in the world was it!? It burned her throat and her insides. She felt as though she was breathing through a thin straw, but at least when she had her shirt over her mouth she could breathe at all. Desperately, she sank to the floor and crawled from the hallway she had been in back towards the lobby. If she could get to there, then she could get out.

But as she began to do this, she realised that Dad was still in the big room. She had to help him! Anything could happen! But she might die. So could Dad, though. Coming to a decision, she commando crawled back down the hallway the way she had come. She could see other people in the offices running around screaming, or more eerily, lying silently on the floor. Chell was terrified. She had never seen a dead person before. She had never wanted to. But there were a lot, now. One young lady with light brown hair in a bun and black-rimmed glasses stumbled from her office clutching at her throat and fell almost directly on top of Chell. The child stared in horror at the poor lady. She could even see the name tag: Susan Tiemann.

But she mustn't show fear! She had to save Dad, she had to be strong! Moving the lady away from her, Chell began crawling again, going slowly towards the massive room. She was almost there. She could see the door at the end of the chamber. As she came towards it, it opened. The interior of the room did nothing to ease her fear. All of the people who hand been in there were lying on the floor, unmoving.

All but one.

It was that man, the one she had seen before. He was standing next to Chell, attaching a funny-looking mask to his face. It covered everything on his face, and it had a long piece sticking out where his mouth should be. As he finished tying the straps around the back of his head, he picked up a round, silver object with a purple light in its centre. With it in his arms, he began to run towards the massive metal monster. Chell realised that there was much more of the green gas in here. With a massive amount of panic, she realised that she couldn't breathe. Her vision began to blur. She could see that man, running, running, running. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, like he was underwater. But then he slammed the silver object onto the metal monster.

The lights flickered, and Chell heard an angry, oddly familiar voice.

"Grrr, I HATE you!"

With her heart leaping, she realised that she could breathe again. It was very barely, but she could breathe. But still her vision was blurry, and everything was going dark. She became aware of a man running past her. He didn't stop for her. She tried to tell him to help, to stop.

"Wait!" she tried to scream, but her voice sounded weird, and very, very quiet.

"The Enrichment Centre is pleased to announce a new involuntary testing initiative." said the loud voice.

Chell tried to drag herself towards the exit, forcing herself to stay conscious. It was getting harder, though.

"All living organisms or androids found present in the Enrichment Centre at this time will be inserted into the Aperture Science Relaxation Vault until such time as they may be suitable for testing."

Chell suddenly saw above her a large claw coming down from the ceiling. It scooped her up and carried her into the air, up through the ceiling, and away from the chamber.

"And remember our new motto: testing is the future. And the future starts with you."


End file.
